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This is an old revision of PopularPublications made by TpnEditor on 2012-03-31 22:44:15.

 


SteegerHenry Henry "Harry" Steeger founded Popular Publications Inc. in 1930. The company went on to become one of the three top pulp publishers, with such titles as DustyAyres Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds, Operator5 Operator #5, SpiderThe The Spider, GeeEight G-8 and His Battle Aces, DimeDetective Dime Detective and DimeMystery Dime Mystery Magazine.

Background

SteegerHenry Henry Steeger, an editor at DellPublishing Dell Publishing Co., and partner Harold Goldsmith, of AcePublications Ace Publications, put up $5,000 each and founded Popular Publications in 1930.

SteegerHenry Steeger took the reins as editor, while Goldsmith handled the business end of Popular.

By fall of that year, Popular had four titles on the newsstands: BattleAces Battle Aces, DetectiveActionStories Detective Action Stories, GangWorld Gang World and WesternRangers Western Rangers. A year later, Popular introduced its BlackMask Black Mask clone, DimeDetective Dime Detective. Sales of DimeDetective Dime Detective took off.

Within five years, Popular was among the top pulp magazine publishers, with hits that included GeeEight G-8 and His Battle Aces, Operator5 Operator #5, SpiderThe The Spider, DimeMystery Dime Mystery, HorrorStories Horror Stories, TerrorStories Terror Stories and DimeWestern Dime Western.

Acquisitions provided Popular with several key magazines. In 1934, Popular purchased AdventureMagazine Adventure from Ridgway. In 1940, BlackMask Black Mask joined the Popular lineup. In ’43, Popular bought ArgosyThe Argosy from MunseyFrankA Munsey. In 1949, StreetandSmith Street and Smith canceled its pulp line and by 1952 had sold DetectiveStoryMagazine Detective Story Magazine and WesternStoryMagazine Western Story Magazine to Popular.

But like StreetandSmith Street, Popular found itself succumbing to the fading pulp market and halted its pulp publications in the mid-’50s. ArgosyThe Argosy and AdventureMagazine Adventure remained on the newsstands but in substantially different formats than their all-fiction past.

Divisions

Popular published pulp magazines under its Popular Publications imprint, as well as these:

Selected publications

Among the pulps published by Popular Publications, or its subsidiaries, were (with their debut dates):


Categories
PulpPublishers

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